James Doherty | Open University | United Kingdom

So what is the CERN Student Summer Programme?

You may be wondering what the CERN Student Summer Programme is all about.

Each year CERN invites around 300 student physicists, engineers and computer scientists from across the globe to participate in its summer programme. The students attend a lecture series delivered by some of the world’s leading particle physicists and carry out a research project.

The programme offers students a taste of life at CERN and offers CERN the opportunity to earmark future talent.

The summer students, collectively known as “summies”, also enjoy an active social life with extensive exploration of Geneva’s night life – I feel I can make a particularly valuable contribution to the programme on this front.

My research project will involve developing a system to analyse the beam in the Large Hadron Collider and, potentially, making a mini-accelerator. I’m well excited!

A previous generation of summer students pose in front of the Globe – CERN’s showcase visitor centre.